Monday, April 13, 2009

I've tried a wide range of Linux distributions on this old laptop, from Slackware to Ubuntu via DSL. But I finally settled with Debian. I've used Slackware since 3.X and I originally intended to use here aswell. However that was a couple of years ago and I had alot of issues with sound and the wireless. Then Ubuntu came along and sound and wireless worked without any problems at all. But Ubuntu is not really ideal to run on a 233MHz system with only 96 MB RAM. So I tried other variants of Ubuntu like: Xubuntu, Fluxbuntu and server installations of Ubuntu. However when I was looking for a good tutorial to do a minimal installation of Ubuntu I came across a good tutorial for Debian aswell.

The reason I tried Debian is because I had alot of trouble with Ubuntu dropping out to busybox while booting the installation CD. I temporarily solved that as described below but I got really tired of it aswell.

The above issues does not exist in Debian and like I said before, thats why I ulitmately went with Debian. To do a minimal install with Debian just follow the above link to the tutorial and you're set.

Other stuff worth mentioning.Wireless: 3com Office Connect 11g PCIMCA card.The card will be detected by the kernel while installing. But it won't start since the firmware is missing. The firmware can be aquired here.There's a really good tutorial in the ubuntuforums.org that describes how to set up a wireless card and have it working with WPA encryption from boot.Sound: OPL3-SA2Just run alsaconf and have it autodetect your soundcard.Boot options: acpi=off, noapic, nolapic, vga=788I use the above line, try to find out whats best for your setup.